Promote a Book with Twitter: Top Ten Strategies for Authors

Promote a Book with Twitter: Top Ten Strategies for Authors

Twitter is a great way to promote a book while you build your networks and expert reputation. Here are ten ways authors can harness the power of Twitter to promote a book:

1. Help others by sharing information, while you gain a reputation as an expert. You can post links to helpful articles, recommend resources, offer tips and discuss other books that you enjoy.

2. Meet potential customers and stay in touch with existing customers. Promote your Twitter URL everywhere you’re listed online, and include keywords in your tweets to attract followers who are interested in your topic or genre.

3. Stay on top of news and trends in your field and get ideas for your articles and blog by reading the tweets of the people you follow.

4. Promote live and virtual events such as book signings, podcasts, virtual book tours, teleseminars, and book launches.

5. Gain visibility and new followers by hosting a Twitter contest where you give away a prize to a randomly chosen winner. See this post for tips on creating a Twitter contest.

6. Ask for help and get instant responses. When you request product recommendations, referrals to experts, or help with a technical issue, it’s amazing how helpful folks are. You can also ask for feedback on your book title, cover design or website.

7. Spread good will by helping your peers. Introduce other people in your field or genre, or recommend other related books or products. Re-tweet interesting posts from people that you follow.

8. Promote a book or other products and services. The key is to be subtle and make promotional tweets a small percentage of your overall communications, so people feel like they gain value from following you, not just a stream of sales pitches. Keep promotional and self-serving tweets to 10% to 20% of your total posts.

9. Meet other authors, experts, publishers, marketers, and vendors. Twitter is ideal for networking and it’s a great place to learn more about the publishing industry and meet partners who can help you promote a book.

10. Keep in touch when you’re on the road. There are a number of applications that facilitate twittering from mobile devices.

Have fun! It’s fascinating to meet people from all over the world, gain a glimpse into their lives, and develop a cyber-relationship while you promote a book.

6 thoughts on “Promote a Book with Twitter: Top Ten Strategies for Authors”

I really like the ideas that you shared for Twitter in the aspect of helping others and really showing that you care. I get so many Twitter posts that are just people trying to sell something that sometimes I don’t even want to read the posts. It is obvious that they don’t care about me or someone like me; they just want to sell me something. Thanks for your great article!

I see some authors with a Twitter account attached to their name, I see others with a Twitter account attached to a book he or she has written, and I see some cross promoting with two Twitter feeds, one under the author’s name and the other under the book title. What approach works best? Is cross promoting with two accounts too much or too confusing? Does it seem more personal if it is the author’s personal account? Just wanted some opinion. Thanks.

Tom, that’s a great question! I use a topical name @BookMarketer for my main Twitter account because it shows anyone who sees it exactly what I do. I also have a secondary account using my name @DanaLynnSmith to make it easier for people who are searching for me on Twitter. I don’t post to the second account very often, but I do some posts there encouraging people to follow @BookMarketer. You will need a different email address to set up a second account. It’s easier to manage two accounts if you are using a tool like HootSuite to manage your posts.